Selling without an estate agent

scottyt421

Just a tip to save a few quid.
Moving house so bought a forsale board from Ebay with my mobile details and an email address £21. Fixed up the sign Wednesday this week. Received a verbal offer today, which should be confirmed tomorrow. If it all goes ahead will have saved over £2k in estate agents fees. I had also priced out ads for newspapers. If I had run these they would have cost me a further £200 for 3 adverts in differing papers with photo in colour.
What exactly do agents do for all the money they extort from sellers?

dougk_2

Not alot in my experience apart from tell lots of porky pies!

apple1976

I was tempted to do this with my sale too, but I live in an area which is so unbelievably a seller's market (I could put my summerhouse up and someone would buy it) that I decided against it. The agents here know they have to offer you a good deal otherwise you will go elsewhere or sell privately, so they offered me 0.75%. I though this was worth it given the competition from bidders they could attract, especially as my property is on quite a quiet road where people would be unlikely to see it.

I do agree they don't do much for their money though!

MissMotivation

apple1976 wrote:

I was tempted to do this with my sale too, but I live in an area which is so unbelievably a seller's market (I could put my summerhouse up and someone would buy it) that I decided against it. The agents here know they have to offer you a good deal otherwise you will go elsewhere or sell privately, so they offered me 0.75%. I though this was worth it given the competition from bidders they could attract, especially as my property is on quite a quiet road where people would be unlikely to see it.

I do agree they don't do much for their money though![/QUOTE]


Nothing really, just use their expertise to advise on a sale price, draw up details, take measurements, take photos, draw floorplans. Arrange for a For Sale board, advertise in local press and on various websites, contact potential buyers, arrange viewings, accompany viewings, negotiate offers, make sure buyers can afford the property, draw up paperwork for solicitors, liaise between buyer, seller, solicitor and mortgage adviser and sort out any problems that may occur, update other EA's and solicitors involved in the chain, progress sale through to satisactory completion. Give clients the benefit of their experience and expertise all free of charge and at no cost to buyers and no cost to sellers unless the sale completes. Also bear in mind this isn't just on one property, we could be dealing with 50+ properties at a time!

No we don't do much at all do we!! It makes me cross when I hear comments such as above......you should try spending a week in an EA's office....then you would appreciate what we do!!

maryjane01

I don't think anybody said estate agents turn up to work and do nothing, but as you said yourself you can be working on up to 50 properties at one time, you surely can't be giving good service to 50 sellers and the multiple potential buyers that brings. Maybe that is part of the problem!

MissMotivation

maryjane01 wrote:

I don't think anybody said estate agents turn up to work and do nothing, but as you said yourself you can be working on up to 50 properties at one time, you surely can't be giving good service to 50 sellers and the multiple potential buyers that brings. Maybe that is part of the problem!

Obviously you didn't fully read the other posts in this thread, in every one was a comment about how EA's don't do much for their money, all tell lies etc etc.

I didn't say that one person alone deals with 50+ properties, I meant that the office as a whole would deal with this amount. I personally don't have a problem with my workload just annoyed that we all get tarred with the same brush!

Dan29

scottyt421 wrote:

What exactly do agents do for all the money they extort from sellers?

I don't think it's what they do, so much as what they have:

- Existing prospective buyers;
- High street presence;
- Internet presence;
- Negotiation skills;
- (Bizarrely, perhaps) The benefit that most buyers think any sale without an estate agent might be 'dodgy'.

Oh although what they do do is conduct viewings which would be pretty invaluable to me - maybe not to everyone.

I wouldn't sell without an agent, unless I was right on the stamp duty threshold so knew the price I was likely to sell for would be pretty much fixed.

My worry would be that you'd save, say, £5000 on fees, but that you could have sold your property for more than £5000 more if you'd utilised the benefits which an agent has.

I know that sounds a bit pro-estate agent but I'd prefer to think of it as being pro-me getting the best price for my house

scottyt421

My worry would be that you'd save, say, £5000 on fees, but that you could have sold your property for more than £5000 more if you'd utilised the benefits which an agent has.


Sorry to say this but we did utilise the EA services for getting estimates in the beginning - they all well under valued the property and when we today contacted solicitor to advise that offer would be forthcoming he was surprised that it was £15k more than they had expected. Can't be bad for 4 days on the market. Probably should have waited and gone to closing date as there was quite a lot of interest - but it's done and dusted with not much hassle.
Why do you have to have an EA to measure? - it's not like we can't use a tape and they have a disclaimer that it won't be accurate anyway.
"Buying without an agent may be DODGY "- unlikely we buy flats for the buy-to-let market and have bought several without the aid of an agent who is basically another middleman taking a cut. Agents in our area have booked us for viewings and on arrival the seller didn't know we were coming. Contacting agents requesting details is a laugh - they advised they had nothing in the area BUT I knew that my neighbours house had a for sale board belonging to them -had just read the phone number off it!

IMHO if more people didn't get ripped off by agents vendors and buyers would all be happier for it. Lets face it you do need a solicitor for the legal stuff - they can handle the whole lot - some of them even act as the agents round here, not that it makes them a better EA.

Dan29

scottyt421 wrote:

Sorry to say this but we did utilise the EA services for getting estimates in the beginning - they all well under valued the property and when we today contacted solicitor to advise that offer would be forthcoming he was surprised that it was £15k more than they had expected. Can't be bad for 4 days on the market.

That's great; all I meant is that this wouldn't necessarily be the case for everyone, especially someone who isn't as experienced in buying/selling as you, and/or doesn't have such a good knowledge of the market.

scottyt421 wrote:

"Buying without an agent may be DODGY "- unlikely we buy flats for the buy-to-let market and have bought several without the aid of an agent who is basically another middleman taking a cut.

I actually said "most buyers think any sale without an estate agent might be 'dodgy'", again more thinking of people who buy/sell their own home every five to ten years, not buy-to-let investors who would have more confidence in dealing direct without having someone to hold their hand through the process.

hovas

There is also a number of private house webistes that you can list your property on such as

https://www.houseweb.co.uk
https://www.littlehousecompany.com
https://www.solohomes.co.uk - offering a free bronze service

Woby_Tide

MissMotivation wrote:

Nothing really, just use their expertise to advise on a sale price, draw up details, take measurements, take photos, draw floorplans. Arrange for a For Sale board, advertise in local press and on various websites, contact potential buyers, arrange viewings, accompany viewings, negotiate offers, make sure buyers can afford the property, draw up paperwork for solicitors, liaise between buyer, seller, solicitor and mortgage adviser and sort out any problems that may occur, update other EA's and solicitors involved in the chain, progress sale through to satisactory completion. Give clients the benefit of their experience and expertise all free of charge and at no cost to buyers and no cost to sellers unless the sale completes. Also bear in mind this isn't just on one property, we could be dealing with 50+ properties at a time!

No we don't do much at all do we!! It makes me cross when I hear comments such as above......you should try spending a week in an EA's office....then you would appreciate what we do!!

I think that I hear the sound of the worlds smallest violin playing a sad lament......;)